School board reverses earlier decision, opts for modules at Tommy's Road
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on July 10, 2017 9:10 PM
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Chris West, Dist. 1, seen here at a school board meeting early in the year, cast the deciding vote in Monday night's Wayne County Board of Education decision to implement mobile classrooms to deal with overcrowding at Tommy's Road Elementary School.
The Wayne County Board of Education voted Monday night to install six mobile classroom units at Tommy's Road Elementary, reversing its own prior decision to seek other methods of combating overcrowding.
The units will cost the district more than $300,000 in local funding.
The 4-3 vote included District 1 representative Chris West, who was not present at the June 22 special called session when the board initially voted. That meeting resulted in a 3-3 split, and West's vote at the Monday meeting tipped the balance in favor of the mobile units.
Before the vote, concerned parents spoke to the board about their children at Tommy's Road.
Bill Roberts is the father of a rising third grader at the school. Roberts lives outside the Tommy's Road district, and said that his son had done well at the school. He asked the board not to take action that would disrupt his child's education.
"All I'm here to do tonight is to ask you, earnestly, to let my child finish his education at that school," he said. "I understand that you all have to concern yourself with every child in the county. I have to concern myself with one."
David Lewis, an assistant superintendent, presented the board with six options to tackle overcrowding at Tommy's Road, including the modular classrooms. Another option was full redistricting, which the board agreed must be done but would be impossible to complete by the time classes resume.
Other options included converting the little remaining space in Tommy's Road into classrooms, moving the fifth grade to Greenwood Middle, having multiple classes in single rooms or revoking all non-employee student transfers to the school.
The issue is both immediate and long-term. The district must handle the current overcrowding at Tommy's Road for the coming year, which the mobile units are expected to do. District officials said the school is capable of temporarily converting existing space for classes until the units are ready in September.
The real squeeze will come in the 2018-19 school year, when class size reductions mandated by the General Assembly in House Bill 13 will take full effect.
Roberts said after the meeting this news was disheartening.
"I'd hoped this would get my son through school, but it looks like at best it gets me another year before we have to have another fight about this," he said.
Either way, the units will get plenty of use for the foreseeable future as space comes at an even higher premium.
Board chairman Arnold Flowers was adamantly opposed to the units, which he said were a short-term fix and a poor investment.
"We could have assigned students to other schools, but that would have been very painful for a lot of people there," he said. "This is public education paid for with public dollars, and it comes down to how much do you want to pay for it?"
West, who made the motion to accept the modular units, said that time was the most pressing issue.
"We are behind the eight ball here, and we cannot disrupt the start of school with 30 or 40 days left to go," he said. "Redrawing the lines, sending kids to other schools, none of that was realistic for this school year."
West said that while he does not like modular units, using them in this situation is a "necessary evil" to make sure that students and families are treated fairly and equitably.
West, District 3 Rep. Patricia Burden, District 4 Rep. Jennifer Strickland and District 6 Rep. Richard Pridgen voted in favor of the motion. Flowers, District 2 Rep. Len Henderson and At-Large Rep. Raymond Smith Jr. voted against it.
The board was unanimous, however, in a vote to immediately begin work on redistricting. Henderson proposed that the district plan to have the full redistricting process done by the start of the 2018-2019 school year. This would allow the district to be ready for the class size reductions and have time to hold public meetings to gather community opinions.
The other board members agreed, though no specific meeting on redistricting was called at the time.